The last several years have seen an explosion in digital and streamed audio - never before has it been cheaper or easier to distribute audio around ones house or apartment. From the advent of protocols like Apple’s Airplay or Pandora, to the availability of hardware like the Logitech Squeeze Box or Sonos, getting digital audio and moving it from one place to another is as accessible and easy as it has ever been. At the same time this revolution has taken over, we’ve also seen an explosion on the availability of high quality audio components manufactured and marketed by companies directly to consumers over the internet, giving even the most ardent audiophile access to gear of incredible quality at shockingly low prices.

The convergence of all of these trends is manifest in the new Transparent One speaker. The Transparent One’s are manufactured and marketed directly to consumers by Vanatoo, the brainchild of Gary Gesellchen and Rick Kernen, two long-time audiophiles from Washington.

Gary and Rick had a simple realization: getting the bits around the house had become easy, whether you use a system based around Sonos, Apple, Logitech or even a DNLA device like the Western Digital TV. What was lacking were competent, audiophile quality speaker, with a small footprint, that gave people the flexibility to adopt whatever system the user wanted that possessed everything you’d need to get quality sound. What that meant was building a speaker that had everything - quality D/A conversion, quality amplification, and, most importantly, excellent sound. By building these into one complete system, the user could use any method to get the music to the desired location and then Transparent One would take care of the rest.